Fourpenny Flyer

by Beryl Kingston

  But first she wanted to see if she looked any different.

  It was almost a disappointment that her face in the mirror looked exactly the same: soft and pretty as it often did by candlelight, but unchanged. She gazed at it with great satisfaction for several minutes, the face of a loved woman, a woman in love, a woman engaged to be married – oh she had every right to look pretty! Then she decided that perhaps it was just as well nobody could see any different in her otherwise her mother would notice and know what she’d been doing, and she certainly didn’t want that. Her hair was horribly tangled, which was hardly to be wondered at, but that could soon be put right.

  She set to work with brush and comb, smiling at her reflection as she wound the unruly ringlets round her fingers. Then she stood up to inspect her gown in the long pier glass, and was horrified to see that there was a stain on the back of her skirt. It was a long smear of sticky stuff, with two little streaks of blood in it. She would have to get that cleaned off before anyone saw it or her secret would certainly be out.

  It was very difficult to struggle out of her dress unaided for all the fastenings were at the back, but eventually it was done, and the stain was put to soak in her basin, while she examined her wardrobe for a suitable replacement. It would have to be white with a pink trim so as not to attract too much comment, and so that she could wear the same ribbons and slippers. Oh quick, quick, she scolded herself, or he will wonder what has happened. But even though she dressed as quickly as she could, it was more then twenty minutes before she crept back down the servants’ stairs into the green parlour.

  And as bad luck would have it, the first person to see her as she walked into the drawing room was her mother.

  ‘Ah, there you are, child,’ she said. ‘We were wondering what had become of you. You have changed your gown, I see.’

  ‘La, Mama,’ Matilda said, just a shade too artlessly, ‘somebody spilt wine all down the back of the other. I have put it to soak.’

  ‘No harm done then, I trust,’ her mother said, narrowing her eyes in speculation. This deliberate insouciance of Tilda’s was rather suspicious. She and young Billy Easter had been missing for rather a long time and she’d just seen Billy sneaking back into the room looking decidedly shamefaced.

  But Matilda was already skipping across the room to join her lover.

  After the third dance she was waylaid by Lizzie and Sophie and Maria, who were eager to know what had happened. But by then she had recovered her composure and her high spirits.

  ‘I am engaged to be married,’ she told them coolly. ‘I decided to accept him because I couldn’t bear to see him suffer. Ain’t that so, Billy?’

  Fortunately Billy didn’t have a chance to feel embarrassed and he didn’t have to think of any reply either because all three girls were squealing with pleasure and very busy with congratulations. But it meant he would have to ask her father that very night before somebody else told him the news, and that was rather daunting.

  But when the moment came, it was easier than he expected.

  ‘I have the honour sir,’ he said, using the well-worn formula, ‘to ask for your daughter’s hand in marriage.’

  ‘Is she agreeable to it, eh? That’s what we need to know,’ Mr Honeywood said, looking quite anxious about it. He was very warm after so much dancing, being a well-rounded gentleman, and now he was busy mopping his forehead with a spotted handkerchief.

  ‘Oh yes, sir,’ Billy said happily, ‘Perfectly agreeable, I do assure you.’

  ‘You’ve asked her, eh?’ peering round the edge of the handkerchief.

  Oh lor! Billy thought. Now I’m for it. He’ll be bound to say I should have seen him first. But he admitted that he had.

  ‘Done the right thing me boy, damned if you ain’t,’ Mr Honeywood said, pocketing the handkerchief and shaking him by the hand. ‘Now I’ll tell ’ee what we propose. Mrs Honeywood and I will meet your mother and discuss settlements and so forth. Deal with all the boring details, eh, while you two young things go off and enjoy yourselves. How would that be, eh?’

  ‘Deeply grateful to you sir. Deeply grateful.’

  ‘I shall tell Mrs Honeywood directly,’ Mr Honeywood said, hoping she would be as agreeable as her daughter.

  It was quite a relief to him that she made no objections to the match at all.

  ‘Just in the nick of time if you ask for my opinion, Mr Honeywood,’ she said, pursing her lips. ‘She is grown unconscionably flighty in the last few months. Marriage will settle her. Write you to Mrs Easter directly. The sooner the wedding is fixed the better.’

  ‘You do not think we should have waited for a better match, perhaps?’

  ‘No, Mr Honeywood, I do not. ’Tis my opinion we have made the best match possible. In fact I would go so far as to say that we have discharged our duties towards our daughter quite admirably. Mr Easter is related to Sir Osmond Easter, don’t ’ee forget, and the Easter empire is a force to be reckoned with.’

  So two days later, Nan Easter received two letters by the same post, one rapturously incoherent from her holidaying son, the other politely formal from Mr Honeywood. She wrote back at once, telling Billy it was no more nor less than she expected and sending her love to her ‘new daughter’, and accepting Mr Honeywood’s invitation to dinner the following Saturday.

  ‘That’s like to be an uncommon fine occasion,’ she said to Cosmo Teshmaker. ‘Don’t ’ee think?’ But first there were the Sowerbys to be attended to, and the Sowerbys were coming to London on Friday.

  Chapter Fifteen

  It was three o’clock in the morning and Annie Hopkins, Harriet Sowerby and Pollyanna Thistlethwaite were all hard at work in the front parlour of the rectory. They had kept up a good fire and were working by the extravagant light of ten candles, because the job they were doing had got to be done before morning and without a single error or omission. When they began it Annie had been in floods of tears, and now they were all red-eyed with fatigue, but they worked on doggedly, backs bent, neatly capped heads lowered, small-toothed combs flashing in the firelight. For Jimmy and Beau had been infested with head-lice.

  The two little boys were asleep where they sat, Beau propped against Pollyanna’s cushiony bosom, Jimmy slumped against Harriet’s knees, and both of them smelling pungently of the turpentine with which their heads had been washed that afternoon. From time to time when the harsh comb scratched their scalps too fiercely, or a nit was pulled too roughly from its sticky attachment to their hair, they woke to whimper and were hushed back to sleep by their mother. It had been a long, uncomfortable night.

  ‘I reckon ’e’s clear now, Mrs Hopkins ma’am,’ Pollyanna said, running her fingers against the lie of Beau’s soft, fair hair. ‘Can’t see another one.’

  ‘No more can I, praise be,’ Annie agreed, examining closely too. ‘You can take him up to bed now, Pollyanna, and get some rest yourself, my dear. I’m uncommon grateful to ’ee. Harriet and I will finish Jimmy.’ There was still a lot of picking off to be done on his poor little head.

  ‘Perhaps we should have shaved them after all,’ she said to Harriet when Pollyanna had carried the sleeping baby upstairs.

  ‘And lose all their pretty hair?’ Harriet said. ‘Oh no, Mrs Hopkins, we could never have done that. Think how upset they would have been, and all through no fault of their own.’

  ‘It’s made a deal of work for you and Pollyanna, I fear,’ Annie apologized, combing carefully.

  ‘I am only too glad to be able to help,’ Harriet said, glancing up to smile at this dear new friend of hers, ‘after all that you and Mr Hopkins have done for me.’

  ‘That slut shall leave this house tomorrow morning,’ Annie said fiercely, sliding two nits carefully along a hair.

  Harriet wondered whether the Reverend Hopkins would agree and thought it unlikely, but she didn’t comment. She had never seen Annie so fierce and determined, or so angry, so perhaps it was possible.

  ‘A fine thing,’ Annie grumbled on, ‘if Joh
nnie comes down here to propose to ’ee Saturday and you have to send him away for fear of infection.’

  The word made Harriet’s heart leap in her chest. ‘Propose?’ she said. ‘Is he like to propose?’

  ‘Well I should hope so,’ Annie said, fingers busy. ‘Mama sees your parents a’ Friday does she not? Well then … Turn his head a little to one side, my dear. That’s it! Oh what a dreadful collection, poor little man.’

  They worked in silence for a few minutes till the dreadful collection had been cleared and was burning in the fire and they began on another one.

  Then Annie continued, ‘You will say yes, my dear, won’t you.’

  ‘Well …,’ Harriet murmured, embarrassed by the directness of the question. ‘If he asks me. He hasn’t said … We have not talked of …’

  ‘He always was secretive,’ Annie confided, ‘even as a little boy no bigger than Jimmy. No one ever knew what he was thinking. Mama used to call him a changeling, I remember. Billy was a harum-scarum, a-rushing into everything without stopping to think for so much as a second, but Johnnie was different. He thought about everything, did our Johnnie, on and on and on until he was quite sure. If he ain’t spoken yet, my dear, ’tis only because he is still a-thinking.’

  ‘Maybe we should not speak of – of these things either,’ Harriet tried. It was very difficult to know what to say without seeming critical or ungrateful.

  ‘You love him, do you not?’ Annie asked abruptly, tugging at another nit.

  ‘Yes,’ Harriet admitted, answering truthfully because she was so taken aback. ‘I believe I do.’ He was a good, kind-hearted man, and he’d rescued her from her parents, and was protecting her from their anger even now. How could she help loving him?

  ‘Then you will marry and we shall be sisters,’ Annie said, as if the whole matter had been decided, ‘and I tell ’ee I couldn’t want for a nicer one.’

  It was a delightful compliment and given so easily that it moved the exhausted Harriet to tears.

  ‘You are so good,’ she said, looking up tremulously. To have been accepted into this family so easily and lovingly was a greater good fortune than she could ever have imagined. But would Mr Easter really propose to her? She did hope so, for she loved him truly. What if the lawyers made her go back to her parents, as they very well might? The thought made her chest contract with distress. Oh, she thought, I couldn’t bear it. Not after this happy time with Annie and Mr Hopkins and the boys. Mama will be so angry. If I have to go back she will beat me as sure as fate. ‘I think he’s done,’ she said, changing the subject to give herself something else to occupy her mind. ‘Those were the last.’

  ‘What a night this has been,’ Annie said wearily, putting her comb back in the basin of water. ‘I shall speak to Mr Hopkins as soon as he wakes in the morning.’

  ‘About me and Mr John?’ Harriet said alarmed. ‘Oh pray, Mrs Hopkins, I beg you …’

  ‘No, no,’ Annie said yawning. ‘About that slut. We’ll keep the boys in their room until the matter is settled.’

  It was settled immediately after breakfast, and in such an easy, amicable manner that Harriet was quite amazed by it.

  The Abbotts were in the kitchen, and that was where James and Annie went to talk to them. They left the door open and so Harriet and Pollyanna, who were helping Molly clear the breakfast table, heard every word.

  At first Harriet was ashamed to be eavesdropping. ‘Do ’ee think we ought?’ she whispered to Pollyanna.

  Pollyanna was quite phlegmatic about it. ‘Now whyever not?’ she said. ‘I hears every mortal thing what’s said in this house. They don’t mind, for if they did they be a-whisperin’.’

  ‘It is only right to tell you,’ Mr Hopkins was saying, in his light voice, ‘that we cannot keep you here for very much longer. There is a Hampden Club formed in the village, so I am told, and it is only right that I allow them the use of a room for their meetings, which they are most likely to request.’

  Mr Abbott’s answer was a subdued growl. ‘Aye sir, I knows. My brother he’s a one on ’em. He’s all fer reform is my brother, sir, though I tell ’ee, sir, I can’t for the life of me see what good’ll come of un.’

  ‘A man of much good sense, your brother,’ Mr Hopkins said, adding delicately, ‘Have you managed to find…?’

  ‘No, sir, there en’t a job a’ work nowhere, an’ that’s a fact.’

  ‘You tell un, Jack,’ Mrs Abbott said, in her usual belligerent tone.

  ‘It is a bad time,’ Mr Hopkins said. ‘There is no work for anyone. Your brother is right, Mr Abbott, reform is a most urgent necessity.’

  ‘’Tis they machines, sir. Tha’s what ’tis.’

  ‘I would it were otherwise, howsomever …’

  ‘You see how ’tis, do you not, Mr Abbot?’ Annie said. ‘You cannot stay with us for ever.’

  ‘Yes, Ma’am,’ Mr Abbott growled again. ‘I see how ’tis, ma’am. We mussen be a burden. ’Tis uncommon kind of ’ee to have borne with us so long. If ’twern’t for the babes we could walk to Norwich, ma’am, for a labourin’ job or some such. But ’tis mortal long way for babes, ma’am. My brother could take ’em in after November when his youngest gel goes into service, ma’am, but ’tis a mortal long time to November.’

  ‘Well now,’ Mr Hopkins said, ‘as to that, I am sure my wife would be agreeable to the children staying on here for a week or two, would you not, Mrs Hopkins?’

  ‘They could stay till the end of November,’ Annie said unexpectedly, ‘if ’twould help ’ee. I’m sure I’ve no desire to turn your children out in the cold. We could manage to keep ’em till then, could we not, Mr Hopkins?’

  ‘Well!’ Harriet whispered.

  ‘That’s the way they always go on,’ Pollyanna said. ‘’Tis called a compermise, so they say. That’s what ’tis. A compermise. Meetin’ halfway so Mrs Hopkins says.’

  A compromise, Harriet thought, meeting halfway, giving something to each other, neither getting exactly what they wanted but both achieving something. It was admirable and what she ought to have expected from such a pair. And as the easy talk went on, she knew with a tightening of foreboding that her parents would never compromise about anything. They would either get their own way on Friday or they would be defeated. And she said a silent, treacherous prayer for their defeat.

  Nevertheless anxiety kept her awake all Thursday night.

  Mr and Mrs Sowerby had prepared themselves for their meeting with the infamous Mrs Easter by a week of prayer and righteous indignation. Unlike their daughter, they slept well on Thursday night and now, dressed in their Sunday-go-to-meeting black, they were in good time to catch the coach.

  ‘Whatever else,’ Mr Sowerby told his wife as he locked up the house, ‘whatever else we will stand by our principles. Mr Easter has done us a grievous wrong, but I tell ’ee, Mother, he need not think he will prevail. When we open this door tomorrow, Harriet will be returned to us.’

  ‘Amen!’ Mrs Sowerby said fiercely. They’d had a very difficult time of it during the past few weeks, with their neighbours so obviously inquisitive about where Harriet had gone and the congregation asking pointed questions, and even though they’d answered with truth that she was working as companion to the wife of a clergyman, there was no doubt in anybody’s mind that she ought to be at home, where she belonged.

  In Nan’s headquarters in the Strand, John Easter was making his last appeal to Mr Brougham and Cosmo Teshmaker. ‘It is understood that Miss Sowerby is not to be returned to her parents,’ he urged. He too had passed a sleepless night worrying about the interview, and he was dreading the moment when his adversaries would arrive.

  He and Nan and their two lawyers had been watching out for them, standing at the window of her luxurious office with her splendid fire crackling behind them, both lawyers professionally noncomittal, Nan warm with mischief, John apprehensive. Outside it was blowing a gale and the wind was rattling the windowpanes.

  ‘It is quite understood, Mr John
,’ Cosmo said. ‘You need not concern yourself I do assure you. Mr Brougham is here.’

  ‘I still maintain that I should be present, Mama,’ John said, ‘if not to participate, then at least to hear what is said.’

  ‘Aye, so you say,’ his mother said coolly. ‘Howsomever, Mr Brougham thinks otherwise. Do you not, Mr Brougham?’

  ‘Given the circmstances,’ Mr Brougham said easily, ‘I do believe your absence would be advisable.’

  ‘He en’t to be here,’ Nan said. ‘Come now Johnnie, you know ’tis for the best. You may sit behind the partition in the inner office if you’ve a mind to. Then you could hear every word.’

  He was horrified at such a suggestion. ‘I could not possibly stoop to such a thing, Mama,’ he protested. How could an Easter play such a hole-in-the-corner trick? It would be terribly undignified.

  ‘Then you must stay in your office and wait ’til we call ’ee,’ Nan said. ‘Don’t ’ee fret. ’Twill all go well, take my word for it.’

  ‘They are bullies,’ he warned.

  ‘We shall be a match for ’em,’ she said, ‘whenever they come.’

  The Sowerbys appeared, just as the church clock of St Clements’ Danes was striking four. They were dressed in their uncompromising black and stalked along the crowded Strand as stiff as broomsticks, looking neither left nor right, and set apart from everybody else in the street by their lack of colour and their rigidity. There was an extravagance of movement and excitement all around them, horses trotting, whips flicking, carriages jolting and swaying, pedestrians scurrying against the wind, greatcoats swirling, or stopping to greet a friend with much arm waving and head nodding and clutching of hats. Outside the Exeter ‘Change the usual excited crowds were rushing to see the menagerie, pointing up at the brightly coloured pictures of monsters and wild beasts that decorated its walls and urged on by the doormen who were dressed up as Yeomen of the Guard and stood yelling at the entrance. Buskers turned wind-tossed somersaults, hawkers offered wind-dusted pies. But the Sowerbys were impervious to it all. Others might bend to the elements if they wished, they progressed.